Celebrating _Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin_ (FlowerSong Press)

 Celebrating _Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin_ (FlowerSong Press)

 

I’m excited to invite our lectores de La Bloga to a reading of my book Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin (FlowerSong Press, 2020) on Friday, October 1, at 7 p.m. CST on Facebook and Zoom.  This event is organized by Edward Vidaurre, editor of FlowerSong Press.  Please join us by going to the FlowerSong Press Facebook page el Viernes 1 de octubre.  We are celebrating the nomination of Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin as a finalist for the Juan Felipe Herrera Poetry Award as Best Book of Bilingual Poetry of the International Latino Book Awards 2021. Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin was translated by Sandra Kingery y sus estudiantes. Music performance by Flor Lizbeth Cruz. Espero y nos puedan acompañar. ¡Que la poesía nos salve!

 Xánath Caraza’s Corta la piel/It Pierces the Skin is a remarkable collection of prose poems in which we see the conjuring poet fearless enough to take us through personal, political and geographical terrains.  The poems are muscular meditations on rage, powerlessness, love, and ultimately the sanctity/sanity of poetry.  The title fits into the visceral world filled with the paradoxes of beauty and violence that Caraza is famous for: the fierce loneliness of the New York city trains over the Hudson, Violeta (the Salvadoran speaker, the figure who is observed, the writer who is writing the poem) discerns the full moon as “Icy, splendid, silvery white.”  In one of her most poignant political poems, we encounter the disappeared forty-third student from Ayotzinapa who sees “The stars in the heavens were shining like never before” while his mouth is “buzzing with flies.” Another poem, “Our Sons and Daughters,” captures the heartbreaking evil of separating children from their parents at the border.  Water becomes an ever increasing trope throughout as we move from New York to Lisbon to Athens, an element essential for survival as poetry itself, the poet’s “liquid words” joining the river of memory.  They “flow on placid waters.  They sway back and forth in her mouth.”  Xánath Caraza is one of the most courageous Latina poets writing today. The “silent voice of dawn gallops” towards something framed in hope, and Caraza’s poems leave you light headed, sorrowful, yet empowered.

 

—Helena Maria Viramontes

Author of Their Dogs Came with Them

Xánath Caraza’s Corta la piel is a very powerful piece of writing. These 62 interconnected short prose poems move the reader with images encompassing everything from the personal struggles of the protagonists to current events to the conquest of the Americas. The poignancy of contemplating a world that is, as Violeta murmurs in the first story, “so screwed up” is leavened with shimmering glimpses of the beauty of the natural world and a paean to the power of writing, all expressed in texts that sparkle with the energy and brio and authenticity found in all of Xánath Caraza’s writing.

The two protagonists in these stories afford us dual levels of reality: at the primary level, we have texts in roman script which focus on Violeta the writer. That first Violeta creates the fiction within the fiction, the italicized stories written by Violeta about a fictional character who is also named Violeta. These nesting stories emphasize the creative process as our primary protagonist invents a secondary protagonist who shares many of her experiences and concerns about the world.  Both suffer loneliness and a failed relationship, both revel in the beauty of nature (the moon, water, fog, birdsong), both are drawn inexorably back to memories of their troubled past when they hear the whistles of trains, and both celebrate the power of the written word. The dual nature of the two Violetas is most readily apparent in “Loss,” the only story that includes both roman and italic script: “The racist groups were organizing, and the weight of their negative energy was felt more strongly every day. It was heartbreaking, a threat. There’s nothing worse than ignorance, Violeta wrote, but she was wrong, there was something even worse…”. Subsequent references to the first Violeta’s writing process are more subtle as they remain in italic script: “It’s very easy to project our fears onto others and then blame them, Violeta continued writing”.

 —Sandra Kingery

Lycoming College

 

The first text, which also gives us the title of the collection, is an indictment of the brutality of the war in El Salvador, since the protagonist remembers that when she was a child she had to flee abruptly—by train—from the Salvadoran soldiers who suddenly appeared near her house with machine guns. That thought leads to another, current and present: the cancelation of the Temporary Protected Status or TPS for Salvadorans. Both reflections are sparked by the sound of a train and by a small cut that the protagonist suffers in her kitchen. In this way, a connection is made between Violeta’s private experience, in other words, the microcosm of the violence she has experienced personally, and the macrocosm of the violence in El Salvador and the anti-immigration politics carried out by the U.S. government. As with other texts in this collection, nature, here embodied in the song of the woodpecker that Violeta hears in the garden and in the trees that she sees from her kitchen window, helps her find peace in a foreign land: “She was soothed by the chirping sounds coming from the thick bushes.”  The social theme, constant in Caraza’s writing, is also found in “43,” a story that alludes to the disappearance of the 43 normalistas in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, in September 2014, where the narrative voice imagines itself as one of the victims who lie beneath the sun with no tomb and no justice: “In the darkness of the night, I felt warm blood trickling toward my eyes. . . ‘I’m from Ayotzinapa’. . . I am the 43.”

—María Esther Quintana Millamoto

Texas A&M University

 

This is a book of beautiful, poetic images of loneliness, grief and emptiness.  The persona of Violeta tells of a violent childhood of abandonment and impossible love via her travels in New York, Portugal, and Greece.   For Violeta, only ink remains; only ink is indelible.  Translator Sandra Kingery and her team of students have produced smooth, faithful translations that carry all of the sorrow of Caraza’s originals.

 —Don Cellini

poet / translator

Piedra poemas / Stone Poems

 

Corta la piel de Xánath Caraza, una guía que abriga al espíritu y atiza la flama creativa.

 Corta la piel de Xánath Caraza, una guía que abriga al espíritu y atiza la flama creativa.

Por Álvaro Torres-Calderón

 

Haber leído Corta la piel de Xánath Caraza es reflexionar sobre el sentido de la vida. Viajamos por diferentes estados de la protagonista, Violeta, inmigrante que vive en los Estados Unidos de origen salvadoreño, escritora y viajera.

Se disfruta la lectura por la interconexión de las pequeñas prosas poéticas en las que la autora nos muestra la historia de Violeta. Lleva a cuestas un pasado de abuso por los hombres de su vida, comenzando por “el peor de todos,” su padre y el reciente recuerdo de “Pedro”, quien no supo valorarla. Podríamos tomar esta narración como el primer nivel, el más íntimo, el de la guerra interna, “la personal, la que no la dejaba respirar ni seguir viviendo” (Corta la piel, 53). El segundo nivel, son los temas sociales presentes que nos hacen reflexionar de cómo el mundo se desarrolla en la sin razón, en lo insensibles que nuestros días pueden ser. La protagonista y escritora, nos recuerda que en este nivel social también se produce un corte no superficial, una herida que nos sangra profundo. Así en la viñeta de “Corta la piel”, la protagonista nos dice que “El mundo está de cabeza. Ya los pájaros no distinguen entre el metal y la madera” (39). Esto se conecta con la noticia de la cancelación del estado de protección ofrecida a refugiados hondureños en los Estados Unidos, y que previamente había sido cancelada a los salvadoreños. La tendencia del mundo al revés en cuanto al comportamiento social se ve en la historia “43” que hace referencia al asesinato de cuarentitrés estudiantes de Ayotzinapa en el estado de Guerrero, México el 26 de septiembre del 2014. La protagonista siente ser uno de esos estudiantes acribillados y nos da la imagen de la podredumbre, “la bilis, sangre y moscas” (45), de los cuerpos amontonados bajo el sol calcinante. Es sobrecogedor leer en “Nuestros niños” aquel reclamo que hace Violeta sobre la desaparición de estos, los que han perecido en guerras, siendo ella una sobreviviente o los que murieron al ser separados de sus familias, porque es la pérdida del futuro. No es solo un reclamo que muestra el desconsuelo de los padres o de aquellos niños sobrevivientes que ahora son adultos; sino también la indignación ante el comportamiento humano y lo absurdo que puede llegar a ser. Indignante como lo que siente sobre el racismo y su fundamento en la ignorancia que crea violencia entre humanos. Así nos dice en “La pérdida”: “Sólo los más sádicos se excitan con la violencia. Hay que estar enfermo para disfrutar de la vida de esta manera.” (71). En “Nacimiento,” Violeta muestra también su desaprobación por el pasado histórico y la violencia ejercida en el encuentro y la colonización de la América Hispana, mientras visita el monasterio de la Rábida en Palos de la Frontera, España. Como se ha mencionado, el nivel de reflexión social en la protagonista está presente y nos invita a sensibilizarnos para ver la dimensión más amplia y zafarnos de la burbuja o niebla que nos enceguece.

El tercer nivel puede ser considerado como el filosófico, el planteamiento conflictivo de lo existencial y lo absurdo de las cosas, que encierra a los dos primeros niveles. Está relacionado con la búsqueda del sentido de la vida en términos de Albert Camus, es decir, una repetición de comportamientos sin sentido con el único significado que el que la persona le dé. Violeta alivia la carga atormentadora de su pasado a través de la escritura y los viajes para cambiar “esa energía negativa que la estaba asfixiando” (59). De otro lado la existencia de los absurdos sociales, mencionados por la protagonista, seguirán en la medida en que no exista una revolución o protesta de la sociedad por cambiar. Podríamos decir en palabras de Camus,
“[el] esfuerzo mismo para llegar a las cimas basta para llenar un corazón de hombre. Hay que imaginarse a Sísifo dichoso.” A su vez, para llegar a este estado de cambio se requiere de la soledad (entendida como espacio y tiempo para reflexionar), la libertad y la diversidad que son aspectos que también vemos en las diferentes imágenes ofrecidas por Caraza en su libro.

Resalto tres aspectos que la autora desarrolla: a) Las imágenes ricas y poderosas en las que expresa soledad, libertad y diversidad; b) la búsqueda del sentido de la vida con el objetivo de aliviar la carga de la desilusión producida por la violencia y el desamor en diferentes momentos de la protagonista; y c) la escritura y viajes como guía de crecimiento y cambio.

El primer aspecto, en cuanto a la riqueza de imágenes, contiene la nostalgia y la soledad de Violeta, a través del silbido del tren o el tren mismo que le hacen recordar su salida de El Salvador. Nueva York, la inmensidad del río Hudson, marzo, el viento y el frío son imágenes que constantemente son retratadas como imágenes de la soledad y el pasado y que sirven para motivar a la escritora a reflexionar y hacer un cambio. Ante el espíritu inquieto y creativo se contrapone la niebla que enfatiza el desencanto.  El padre, Pedro, Sísifo, la espada en la Rábida son imágenes de lo absurdo, de la repetición absurda de la violencia, de la inseguridad y de los miedos.

Como contraparte tenemos la ternura, el matzo brei que su amiga Golda le enseñó a preparar, el café de Lisboa, Pessoa, los azulejos, el shopping mall y demás lugares que visita y describe. Son elementos que influyen en la libertad de la escritora, alimentan su creatividad para continuar y así mismo nos invita a disfrutar de la diversidad que experimenta en su relación con personas y lugares. Así dentro del frío de marzo que hay en Nueva York tenemos la memoria cálida, de su amiga Golda, que le enseñó a preparar matzo brei, un plato de origen judío hecho por muchas familias judías americanas en Nueva York. Nos habla de la estatua del poeta portugués Fernando Pessoa en el café “A brasileira” cerca del Convento del Carmen (Igreja do Carmo) con sus arcos góticos. Ciertamente, mencionar su experiencia en Palos de la Frontera en Huelva, España es un momento importante por lo histórico del lugar y a su vez invita a la reflexión sobre los acontecimientos y personas que intervinieron en los años finales del siglo XV y que cambiaron la concepción del mundo tanto para europeos como para americanos. Finalmente Atenas es el destino final del viaje y al mismo tiempo una experiencia catártica por la que en la historia “Delfos” recibe la respuesta de aquella búsqueda: “Conócete a ti mismo”(143).

En el segundo aspecto, Violeta va encontrando el sentido de la vida al observar las cosas que están a su alrededor en su constante viaje. La protagonista valora las cosas simples, los placeres y las decepciones. El pasado puede ser doloroso; sin embargo, la conexión que experimenta en los lugares que visita va curando heridas y a su vez renueva su esperanza y extiende la vida. En otro lugar, en otro tiempo alguien más experimentará un proceso parecido como el que se ve en “Hojas sueltas” en el que el dedo sangra, “una hoja de papel, como el filo de una navaja, ha cortado profundamente la piel de la escritora.” (161)

El tercer aspecto abarca la escritura y los viajes que hace la protagonista, que sirven como elementos de crecimiento intelectual y espiritual. Vemos un lenguaje poético en la prosa de Caraza, donde fluyen las imágenes, la musicalidad, el ritmo y lo romántico. Un ejemplo de ello lo vemos en “Soy tuya.” Las imágenes, la música son fluidas o líquidas como la misma autora representa en la siguiente línea: “Jade líquido de este río imaginario, cauce lento que nace del corazón de la tierra” (99). Es historia poderosa en la cual Caraza usa toda su sensibilidad y cuidado estilístico cuyo final es un canto y devoción a lo poético: “Poesía, soy tuya…Nace la noche y el crepúsculo llora el último rayo de luz”. Por supuesto, otro ejemplo, de este carácter musical y romántico lo tenemos en “La hora de las golondrinas” como un tributo al poeta Adolfo Bécquer, pero añade el sello característico de la autora que hemos visto en otros trabajos como el uso de la lluvia y la obsidiana. Más de esta musicalidad la vemos en “El fado,” que se presenta como una referencia que hace Violeta a una tradición portuguesa de canción melancólica. La música, el ritmo y la relación amorosa confluyen en dos líneas en “Aixa” que en lo corto de sus frases encierra la complejidad de las relaciones humanas, complementándose con la viñeta “Amor en llamas” en la que señala la pasión de la vida, la fuerza interpretativa del arte, la energía de la bailadora de Flamenco en el tablado como alegoría de la vida al ritmo de “la guitarra [que] se rasgaba con sus pasos de lumbre.” [Es la vida] “una poesía en movimiento, amor en llamas” (129).

La escritura es un proceso que regenera a la protagonista y su contenido motiva al lector a crecer en conocimiento también. Hay varios elementos que la autora pone en sus viñetas poéticas en las que invita a los lectores a buscar información, como una guía turística, incluyendo referencias históricas, políticas, filosóficas y culinarias. El viaje nos transporta desde Nueva York, Estados Unidos hasta Atenas, Grecia, pasando por Lisboa y Oporto en Portugal, así como por Huelva, Sevilla, Granada y Avilés en España. Acompañamos a la escritora, Violeta, en sus encuentros y desencuentros, en sus aciertos y desaciertos, en sus ideas definidas y en sus ediciones escritas. A través de la escritura, acompañamos a la protagonista en sus facetas: la niña maltratada, la mujer inmigrante adaptándose a una nueva atmósfera, la mujer escritora que denuncia las injusticias, la viajera. Así por ejemplo “Vida paralela” nos muestra a la mujer “que escribe sin parar” (155). Es la mujer cuya libertad expresa a través de la escritura, imaginando, creando y denunciando. Violeta busca alivio en sacar todo aquello que ha reprimido y lo comparte con sus lectores. El futuro es incierto, pero la vida misma nos pone en un viaje constante, de lucha y escritura para contrarrestar ‘el viento glacial’ que corta la piel.

Para concluir, Corta la piel de Xánath Caraza es un libro que nos recuerda que la vida no es ni debe ser estática, pasiva ni repetitiva. Las heridas se lavan, se tratan y se dejan curar. Dejan huella y, sin embargo, aquellas heridas ayudan a aprender del pasado, a apreciar el presente y a enfrentar el futuro con más entereza. El libro de Caraza, nos ofrece una guía que recrea al espíritu y estimula la curiosidad por conocer de las abundantes referencias que la protagonista nos ofrece. Denuncia la injusticia, resalta la libertad y nos hace valorar las cosas que nos rodean, aprendemos de ellas y forman parte de nuestra forma de ser. Lo poético de su prosa, la belleza de imágenes y lo trascendental de su mensaje hacen de su lectura una muy grata experiencia.   

Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin (FlowerSong Press, 2020)

Álvaro Torres-Calderón es abogado peruano y Profesor Asociado del Departamento de Español de University of North Georgia. Ha participado en la publicación de Alejo Carpentier ante la crítica, Caracas: Monte Ávila 2005, con el artículo “Alejo Carpentier y el hombre fronterizo: una constante en el Reino de este mundo”, Publicó "Nación, identidad y frontera en la prosa de Clorinda Matto de Turner" en Tinta Expresa (2015). Publicó su poemario "Claroscuro," en Lima, 2010 y la versión en español/inglés en Chicago, 2014. Considerado en dos antologías poéticas en España y Rumanía. Tiene poemas traducidos al rumano y poemas publicados en inglés para Stonepile Writer's Anthology con la University of North Georgia Press así como poemas, artículos y entrevistas en revistas y páginas digitales norteamericanas, latinoamericanas y españolas. En 2018 ha publicado su libro Mujer, nación y progreso en el discurso del exilio de Clorinda Matto de Turner y Juana Manuela Gorriti. Sus temas de investigación abarcan diferentes áreas entre los cuales se encuentran el género, la identidad, la nación, las fronteras y el poder.

 

Book Review: Piercing Insensibility with Poetry by Gabriel Hugo

 

Book Review: Piercing Insensibility with Poetry by Gabriel Hugo

 

Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin

by Xánath Caraza

FlowerSong Press, 2020

Translated by Sandra Kingery

 

Reading Xanath Caraza’s newest collection of poetry Corta la piel/It Pierces the Skin is an experience in something that is quickly becoming unusual in this fast world of disposable memes and social media video clips. It Pierces the Skin pierces the senses as Violeta, the protagonist of this almost novelistic narrative, describes images of death from the victim’s point of view just as easily and vividly as she does images of love and desire. The smell death should have is not something we think of very often. The closest most of us in the U.S. have been to awakening in a field of dead human bodies is through images of Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” a fictionalized account of brown people’s history in the Americas which fails to capture the full sense of death and dying because it never mentions the stench. Caraza is brilliant in bringing images of this and other scenes of blood, with and without the horror that can accompany them. In one poem, the blood can be the result of a violent assault by armed guerrillas upon innocent villagers in Central America, and in another, a paper cut upon the poet’s finger.

 

The work on which Caraza has embarked in this collection serves not only as a window into historical moments in the Americas and the world, but also as an instructional manual on how to write poetically. Poetry, the very word which inspires typical laypersons to roll our eyes into our skulls as we reach our hands at break-neck speed for a smart phone, a laptop, anything that could sooth our need for diversion if only for that very superficial moment, lest we be subjected to a heavy dousing of poetic and philosophical gasoline on the brain, which could lead to some kind of revelation or truth enveloping us as we blindly and deafly pass through this Earth.

 

Nonetheless, this aversion to the broad realm of poetry is not the fault of the poet or the layperson, but of society itself. Our teachers need to teach more from poetry books, as they teach from math books. Parents need to inculcate their children with the sensibilities of poets, for besides clergy, who among us is purest or more honest?  Poets advocate for the victims of oppression. Figures like Caraza depict for us the contradictions in our collective history, as in “The Sword,” a poem about Christopher Columbus and the violence he and the church unleashed through evangelism. We need to see this content dramatized for us in words in poetic stanzas, because no other vehicle manages to convey those images as powerfully as does the poet through the written word.

 

Among bilingual Spanish/English speakers as myself, a common utterance is that Spanish presents a better experience when reading poetry, because it just sounds much more romantic, profound, and dramatic when it needs to be. For the most part, in my experience, this has been the case. Yet, this general rule does not always hold true. Such was the case when I read “Falsa Alarma/False Alarm”, and the book’s namesake “Corta la Piel/It Pierces the Skin,” two of my favorite poems in this book. The entire collection was translated by Sandra Kingery and students at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. The translations themselves seemed to me not as the same poems merely interpreted in another language (translated from Spanish to English), but more like a continuation of the thought process, the inspiration stretched along, spread wider to encompass territory that constitutes a separate world with separate ideas, but clearly with similar sensibilities. At times throughout the pages, I felt that the English translation surpassed the original not in skill or depth, but in magnitude and urgency.

 

Caraza’s poetry is emotive, powerful, and transcendental in its tone and content. Corta la piel/It Pierces the Skin is a collection worthy of collecting and passing along to the next generation. It not only shows the pictures of our current and past world history interlaced with matters of the heart and urges of the human body, but also teaches an art form that seems to be on the brink of being forgotten. Thanks to Xanath Caraza, forgetting the power of poetry we will not.

CORTA LA PIEL, Una ficción dentro de una ficción

 CORTA  LA  PIEL, Una ficción dentro de una ficción

por Justine Temeyissa Patale

Corta la piel / It Pierces the Skin

de Xánath Caraza

Traducido al inglés por Sandra Kingery

Prólogo por María Esther Quintana Millamoto

(FlowerSong Press, 2020)

 

La historia inicia con la voz de una de las Violetas, dos personajes misteriosos con el mismo nombre. En efecto Violeta es un personaje que funciona con dos facetas y existe entre dos mundos. Corta la piel es una obra ambientada en una diégesis que pone al lector frente a una doble narración. La primera se enfoca en una protagonista, llamada violeta, que vive en “la más profunda de las soledades” en Nueva York, una “ciudad maldita, llena de puentes metálicos, donde la soledad, ha descubierto, se siente más profundamente.” La segunda diégesis está centrada en la vida de otra protagonista también llamada Violeta. La primera violeta mediante sus escritos relata las peripecias de su niñez en El Salvador durante la guerra. Dicho de otro modo, el segundo mundo ficticio, es donde encontramos el personaje ficticio creado por violeta la protagonista principal. En realidad, en este mundo imaginario, el personaje Violeta se vuelve en una narradora homodiegética presentando el panorama de la vida de violeta.

 

En uno de los relatos, Violeta, la narradora, expone con un tono melancólico recuerdos nostálgicos sobre la desaparición de los 43 estudiantes normalistas de Ayotzinapa. Así, Violeta la narradora toma una postura de narrador testigo cuya voz es el canal de expresión de los sentimientos profundos de los desaparecidos y de sus parientes. De hecho la presencia de una enunciadora explícita traduce la implicación emocional de la narradora en la historia contada. Mejor dicho mediante su voz narradora, Violeta la narradora se vuelve en narradora autodiegética y esto se materializa en el enunciado siguiente “soy estudiante normalista, soy el 43”. Para la narradora, el más profundo dolor se percibe en el hecho de que “No hay cuerpos que abrazar” para exceptuar lo fatal.

 

Como personajes evocados tenemos, Golda, Benjamín, los estudiantes desaparecidos, los abuelos de Violeta, los padres de Violeta, los soldados en El Salvador... Al mismo tiempo, en los relatos, se nota una utilización intensa de elementos de la naturaleza tales como los ríos, los árboles, la luna, el sol, las estrellas, las hojas, el viento… La presencia de estos elementos cósmicos marca una comunicación con lo medioambiental.   

 

La temática central de esta obra es la dolorosa y profunda soledad. Además, mediante los recuerdos de las dos protagonistas, los relatos presentan un recorrido histórico, geográfico y social que le confiere un valor un tanto documental a la obra. Como temas secundarios, Corta la piel pone en relieve los temas de la muerte, de la guerra, del amor, de la amistad, de la violencia, del dolor y de la esperanza.

 

Corta la piel llega a una conclusión desoladora donde las dos protagonistas están frente a su realidad, el dolor que causa la soledad. Realidad en la que muere la esperanza poco a poco, como lo descubrimos al leer “Gotea la sangre en las hojas blancas. El papel la absorbe mientras se expande”.

Justine Temeyissa Patale es poeta y docente de la enseñanza secundaria de Camerún. Justine tiene una maestría en Estudios Hispánicos y es Doctoranda de la Universidad de Maroua (Camerún). 

Translator’s Note for 'Corta la piel'

Translator’s Note for Corta la piel.

by Sandra Kingery

 

Los traductores

Xánath Caraza’s Corta la piel (FlowerSong Press, 2020) is a very powerful piece of writing. These 62 interconnected short prose poems move the reader with images encompassing everything from the personal struggles of the protagonists to current events to the conquest of the Americas. The poignancy of contemplating a world that is, as Violeta murmurs in the first story, “so screwed up” (40) is leavened with shimmering glimpses of the beauty of the natural world and a paean to the power of writing, all expressed in texts that sparkle with the energy and brio and authenticity found in all of Xánath Caraza’s writing.

The two protagonists in these stories afford us dual levels of reality: at the primary level, we have texts in roman script which focus on Violeta the writer. That first Violeta creates the fiction within the fiction, the italicized stories written by Violeta about a fictional character who is also named Violeta. These nesting stories emphasize the creative process as our primary protagonist invents a secondary protagonist who shares many of her experiences and concerns about the world.  Both suffer loneliness and a failed relationship, both revel in the beauty of nature (the moon, water, fog, birdsong), both are drawn inexorably back to memories of their troubled past when they hear the whistles of trains, and both celebrate the power of the written word. The dual nature of the two Violetas is most readily apparent in “Loss,” the only story that includes both roman and italic script: “The racist groups were organizing, and the weight of their negative energy was felt more strongly every day. It was heartbreaking, a threat. There’s nothing worse than ignorance, Violeta wrote, but she was wrong, there was something even worse…” (72). Subsequent references to the first Violeta’s writing process are more subtle as they remain in italic script: “It’s very easy to project our fears onto others and then blame them, Violeta continued writing” (74).

This emphasis on writing continues throughout the book. For example, in “False alarm,” the first Violeta reflects upon everything she wrote in the immediately preceding stories: “she got distracted thinking about . . . what she had written regarding the students who had disappeared in Mexico, about the cancellation of TPS, the separation of families, and the recipes that she and Golda shared” (52). The process of writing is also at the forefront in “The Time of Swallows,” where a line in the italicized text appears in strike through, revealing Violeta’s editing process and the contingent nature of her words: “Obsidian rain on aerial currents in the twilight (the time of swallowsthe )” (112).

Twenty-one of the stories focus on the first Violeta, our writer, and these stories expand to encompass short portraits of Violeta’s violent father, her gay grandfather who was never able to come out of the closet, her mother, ex-boyfriends, and friends. Descriptions of her daily life alternate with stories about the emotional reactions she has to the places she visits or the news she confronts. Her travels to various locations in Spain that commemorate the conquest of the Americas afford some of the most emotionally gripping stories in the book. These visits “shattered her and brought her to tears. So much loss, so much pain, the extent of the destruction of her people” (114). When she visits the replicas of Columbus’s three caravels, she internalizes the horrors that took place in the hold she cannot bring herself to enter: “She felt the pain of the slaves, the pestilence, and the inhuman conditions of what was to follow. The pain of the human cargo that was, indefensibly, transported by those ships for so many years” (120).

The emphasis on past injustices in the first Violeta’s texts are echoed in the italicized stories she writes, but the italicized texts tend to emphasize current events—both personal and societal—more than distant history. They include current horrors (the family separation policy in the United States, the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico), but also some of shortest, most poetic stories, encompassing myth and metaphor and musicality (e.g., descriptions of peacocks, fado singers, mythical creatures, and a flamenco dancer who is “poetry in motion, love on fire” (130).)

In spite of the different emphases in the stories related to each of the two Violetas, they both end up focusing on the power and transcendence of writing, words, and poetry. References to poets and writers (Camus, Fernando Pessoa, Armando Palacio Valdés, Julio Cortázar, Cervantes, Unamuno, Sappho) abound. The hopefulness of creation is celebrated in “A world where ink reigns, where thoughts remain captured on paper for all eternity” (156), and Violeta “vowed to dedicate herself to it, to Poetry. Poetry: I am yours” (100).

The power of the written word is momentarily placed into question in the final story when “Loose pages of a manuscript flooded the icy, early morning wind after the trains collided” (162). The pathos of losing that manuscript of written words is mitigated by the last image in the book when “A sheet of paper, like a razor blade, has pierced the writer’s skin deeply. Blood drips on the white pages. The paper absorbs it as it spreads” (162). This final description brings us full circle back to the first line of the book, when “Violeta’s index finger began to bleed” (40). Thus, the ink on the page is replaced by the writer’s life blood which tells its own story in its own way, primitive, biological, profound.

It is always a joy to have the opportunity to translate stories that are so rich and powerful and beautiful. This translation project was especially moving for me, since I translated these stories with an outstanding group of students in a Translation class that I offered at Lycoming College in Spring 2019. I would like to acknowledge all 18 students again here: Caleb M. Beard, Abril M. Cardenas, Hanna Cherres, Joshua Josue Cruz-Avila, Angelina M. Fernandez, Luis Felipe Garcia Tamez, Elizabeth J. Hernandez, Galilea Landeros, Esmeralda Luna, Lyssett Ortuño, Rocio A. Quiñonez, Toussaint R., Karla I. Rios, Emily K. Sampsell, Michael Sanchez Palacios, Briana A. Tafoya-Saravia, Leví A. Tristán Aguirre, and Aaron M. Willsea.

Translating a book for publication with undergraduate students is an unusual (and some might say, foolhardy) type of undertaking, but since this project ended up being so successful, I would like to share a little bit about the process. The precursor to this particular project was a joint translation that I did with another student, Kaitlyn Hipple (Lycoming College, 2018), where we spent two summers translating Xánath Caraza’s Metztli. I received a faculty-student research grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to begin translating a few of the stories in the book with Kaitlyn during the summer of 2016. Kaitlyn did such an outstanding job that first summer that I applied for a Lycoming College Summer Student Research Grant, supported in part by the Arthur A. Haberberger Chairman’s Endowed Student-Faculty Research Program, to complete the translation with her the following summer. End result: as a recent graduate at the onset of her career as a Spanish teacher, Kaitlyn Hipple already had a published translation, and Metztli went on to win Second Place for Best Collection of Short Stories in the 2019 International Latino Book Awards.

Translating with Kaitlyn was such a positive experience that when I began planning the newest iteration of my Translation class, I took seriously the Mellon Foundation’s charge for faculty members in the arts and humanities to think out how to bring our research into the classroom so that more students have the opportunity to participate in and learn from our work. Just as I was contemplating ways in which I might do that with my Translation class, Xánath shared her manuscript of Corta la piel with me. I loved this book from the first time I read it, and I thought that these very short prose poems were perfect for a semester-long translation project. When I asked Xánath how she would feel about me translating the book with my students, she immediately embraced the idea.

And so this project was born. During the first week of the semester, I had all students translate two stories: “43” and “Our Sons and Daughters,” and we workshopped those stories together over the course of the first few weeks. I wanted students to see how I think about translation questions, and I chose those specific stories because I wanted to push students past the inevitable first stage of simply thinking about individual words or sentences. Students quickly understood that, in order to translate these stories effectively, they would need to grapple with each story’s context and appreciate its poetry and musicality.

After those first two stories, I divided students into the groups in which they would work for the rest of the semester. I was lucky enough to have 18 students in the class, which allowed me to form a perfect grid of groups of three and groups of six so that we could workshop the stories in what is sometimes called a jigsaw puzzle technique.

	SEXTET 1	SEXTET 2	SEXTET 3
TRIO A	Leví	Briana	Aaron
TRIO B	Karla	Rocío	Joshua
TRIO C	Emily	Michael	Hanna
TRIO D	Toussaint	Esmeralda	Galilea
TRIO E	Luis	Abril	Angelina
TRIO F	Lyssett	Caleb	Elizabeth

The jigsaw puzzle technique worked like this: every week for the next 10 weeks, each Trio translated a different story. Students prepared a translation for homework and then workshopped that story with their group. After each Trio came up with an edited group version of their story, the class then moved into the Sextets, where they worked on all six stories. The Sextets sent edits or suggestions back to each of the Trios, which would then workshop the story again with the suggestions from the three different Sextets. The Trios would submit their new draft to me, which I would mark up with questions, comments, and suggestions, and the whole process would begin again. At any one time, students could be working on the first draft of one set of stories, the second draft of another set, the third draft of yet another set, and so on. In this way, every story in the book was edited by everyone in the class multiple times, and we were able to find a common voice for the entire text.

Somewhat to my surprise, this process worked amazingly well. Students took the project very seriously and came up with excellent translations. We also met with Xánath by Skype, which allowed students to ask her questions about the stories. Even more importantly, it motivated students to strive to find the best possible translation for the stories because they admired Xánath so much after those meetings that they did not want to disappoint her. The first question that one of the students asked Xánath was: “What are you afraid of when you think about having us translate your book?” Xánath’s immediate response to that question (“Afraid of? I’m not afraid of anything. I’m so honored to have you work on this project”) gave them confidence, and her generous and frequent expression of admiration for translators and the art of translation spurred the students to take ownership of the translation they were authoring. In their written reactions to the conversations with Xánath, many of the students wrote about how proud they were to find out that the author respected their work. 

Like all translators, students needed to research a lot of references in the book, from locations in Spain, Italy, and Greece, to historical figures, to current events. After doing that work, they often wanted to footnote or gloss the text to explain the references that they now understood. I encouraged them to honor the mysteries and ambiguities of the original text and afford the English-language reader the right to figure out references in the same way the Spanish-language reader might. Some students also needed to be reassured that they did not need to “fix” “incorrect” sentences, such as “Last night, the waves and the white moon” (42) or “New York, that accursed city, full of metal bridges, where loneliness, she has discovered, is felt more deeply” (44). Once they were given permission to “break the rules,” they quickly came to understand that these small stories are quite simply bursting with rhythm and poetry, which we certainly did not want to suppress.

Many of the students needed to be encouraged to think about the sounds of words, not simply their meaning, but they soon began to enjoy playing with alliteration and consonance in ways that might replicate some of the sounds of the original. They learned to appreciate the fact that, even when we were not able to recreate the exact same pattern of sounds in the exact same places, we could sometimes create a similar effect in a different location or with different sounds. For example, at the end of “The Whims of Lights,” we replaced the sibilant sounds in the Spanish (“Tu voz, mezclada con el viento y el agua, sigue susurrando incomprensibles sueños. Sangra dolor desde la roca” (151)) with W sounds in the English, which also suggested the sounds of the nature that surround the protagonist: “Your voice, mixed with wind and water, continues whispering incomprehensible dreams. Sorrow bleeds from the rocks” (152).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the translation question that created the most disagreement in the class was the title of the book. Variations on “corta la piel” appear nine times in the book, and both “corta” and “piel” occur in other contexts as well. We needed a phrase that worked as a title as well as in each of those locations, some of which referred to a literal laceration of the skin, while others referenced emotional or figurative wounds. The phrase also occurs in the epigraph—a fragment of a poem from Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble which I had previously translated as “cuts the flesh.” Once we settled on “it pierces the skin” as our translation, I changed my translation in the epigraph to match.

In the class’s first conversation with Xánath, she explained that she chose the title for this collection as a way to emphasize the pain and injustice that exist in the world today. In their final response letters to Xánath, many students pointed out very aptly that the book not only reflects that pain, it also motivates the reader to act, to seek justice, to strive for a more equitable world. Students also marveled at how a book that highlights pain can also reflect the beauty, the poetry, the joy to be found in the world. Xánath Caraza is the rare type of writer who can thread that needle, emphasizing the problems and difficulties of the world while also regaling her reader with beauty and with hope.

I would like to express my gratitude to Lycoming College for supporting this project, particularly President Kent Trachte, Provost Philip Sprunger, and the department of Modern Language Studies. Thanks to Kaitlyn Hipple for leading the way. Also and especially, my thanks and appreciation to Xánath Caraza.